


The List

by bluebellsandcocklesshells



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 04:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6738931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebellsandcocklesshells/pseuds/bluebellsandcocklesshells





	The List

_When I was sixteen years old, it was easy to imagine that the world began and ended with Lebanon, a small town of little consequence in Kansas. When plants like wheat and corn grew taller than you were, it was hard to believe that you were significant in a world that felt as vast as the universe was to the world itself.  That feeling was why it was so hard to believe that the man with green eyes and a wicked smile would look at me and see something beyond the dirty coveralls and eighth grade reading level.  I was unprepared for the changes life would bring me that summer; the changes he would make in me._

Castiel started as he heard someone snort in his ear.  He whipped around in time to see his roommate stand up from where he had been leaning down to read over his shoulder.  Dean walked over to his bed and flopped down onto the twin mattress, making the old metal frame squeak dangerously.  Castiel didn’t bother to close his laptop, the damage had been done.

“I thought you were writing the Great American Novel or some shit, not _Dr. Sexy_ fanfiction.”

Castiel stiffened. “You read four sentences.  What could possibly be wrong with it in four sentences?”

“Well, first off,” Dean said, sitting up and digging through his backpack, “don’t write in first person.  Nobody likes first person.”

“Six out of ten books on the current best sellers list for fiction are first person narratives.”

“Secondly, don’t write gay stuff.  It’ll never sell beyond a small niche.”

Castiel sucked in a sharp breath.

“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, just that it’ll be labeled as ‘LGBT Literature’ and never see the light of day from around the corner where they hide that stuff. If you want a large audience to read your coming of age novel about a sensitive teen boy from Kansas, he’s gotta be hooking up with a girl.”

“It’s not about ‘hooking up.’  It’s not even romantic.  The relationship is meant to be platonic.  It is a coming of age story about how a boy who has been isolated and has a limited view of society has his world rocked when he discovers how much more there is to life.”

Dean hauled his massive _Fluid Thermodynamics_ textbook out of his bag and plopped it onto his lap.

“’The man with green eyes and a wicked smile?’  Come on, Cas, whoever your protagonist is,” he fake coughed, “you,” cough, “and whoever his ‘platonic’ friend is,” cough, “me,” cough, “he’s going to wind up pining for his thick, tumescent manmeat up his quivering virginal cavern of naïve desire.”

Castiel flung a pencil at him.  “I’m not writing a trashy romance novel!  And the man is not you.  You’re just a self-absorbed prick.”

Dean stood up and dropped his textbook on his desk, frowned at it, and moved to stand behind Cas’ chair.  He rubbed his shoulders and let Cas sulk as he stared at the first four sentences of his epic novel—that he had to have stopped and started at least thirty-seven times by now.  After all, it was only a month until the end of their freshman year, so he’d been trying to write this thing for about eight and a half months now.

“Stop trying to make it epic.  Just write about something real.”

Castiel relaxed under Dean’s ministrations and stared at the words on his screen.  He deleted them and began typing again.

_When I was eighteen, I fell in love with an asshole. As it turned out, he was a pretty great guy with green eyes and a wicked smile, but he gave terrible shoulder massages._

“Well, fuck you then,” Dean huffed and moved to his desk.  He sat down in his desk chair and flipped open his textbook, rapidly turning pages to find the right chapter.  Castiel stood up and crossed the small space between them.  He slid onto Dean’s lap and ignored his boyfriend’s noise of protest as he blocked his view of his reading assignment.

“How about this? ‘He’d been alive for eighteen years, but he was new to the world.  He’d grown up knowing right from wrong and normal from bizarre and he knew that the person with blue eyes and dark hair and a propensity for misunderstanding people was not right and not normal.  He was a man who knew what it meant to be a man and what a man had to accomplish to lead a good life, a worthwhile life.  He was a man who thought he had the world figured out until the person who was not right and not normal showed him that the world was not just one thing, could never be just one thing.  The world could only be what he made of it.  And that wrong, bizarre person was only all too happy to share his world with him so that they could make one together.”

Castiel pretended like he didn’t see the flush on Dean’s face and edging the tips of his ears.

“How was that?”

Dean shrugged.  “I think you used the word ‘world’ too many times.”

Castiel sighed.  “Yeah, I could feel that as I was saying it.”

“Also,” Dean mumbled, rubbing the back his neck, “you have to make it so the person figures out that there isn’t actually anything wrong or abnormal about them.”

Castiel smiled gently. “Of course.”

Dean looked up at him, and then leaned forward so that they could share a tender, chaste kiss. Then he sat back and bounced Cas in his lap.

“And if you want to make any money, that ‘person’ is going to have to be a chick.”

Castiel groaned and got off his lap.  He stomped back to his desk.

“Maybe I don’t want to write the Great American Novel,” Cas groused.  “Maybe I’ll be content to be published even if I’m hidden away in the LGBT Literature corner.”

Dean smiled and resumed flipping through his textbook.  They worked in silence for a few minutes, Dean actually doing homework and Castiel researching the types of wheat indigenous to Kansas on the Internet.  Then Castiel turned in his seat and hooked his arm over the back of the chair.

“Dean.”

“Yeah, babe,” Dean replied, not looking up from his work.

“Did you mean it when you said I could come visit you over summer break?”

Dean looked up.  “Of course.”

“Even if it means your parents find out about,” he waved a hand between them.

Dean shifted in his seat.  “I mean, they have to find out sometime.”

“Hmm.”

Dean returned to his reading.  Castiel watched him, enjoying the way the light from his desk lamp played over his features.

“Dean.”

Dean looked up, doing a fairly decent job of reigning in his exasperation.

“Yes, Castiel?”

“When we’re in Kansas, would you mind if I do research for my book?”

“Not at all.  You want me to drive you around a bit?  Take you to an actual cornfield or something?”

“No, well, yes, but specifically I’m interested in finding out if having a ‘roll in the hay’ is just an expression because it’s much too itchy to enjoy it in reality.”

Dean laughed and brushed a hand over his face to hide his embarrassment.  He glanced over at his boyfriend.

“Any other things you want us to _research_ while we’re there?”

Castiel grinned.  “I’ve got a list.”


End file.
